Always hard-hitting, intense, emotional

Well, Friday night sure was a lot of fun.

Every week with football is more fun than it ever has been with the unknown of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) still lurking around. When you add in Starkville and West Point on opening night of the Mississippi High School Activities Association’s season, it was hard to even get to sleep on Thursday.

Every year, this is one of my favorite games to cover and Friday was my sixth-straight in the series. I’ve seen a rare blowout here and there and I’ve seen some massive comebacks. What I almost always see is hard-hitting, intense, emotional play from both sides and the fans are usually as into the game as the players.

That was no different on Friday night as the Yellow Jackets and Green Wave went head to head with SHS coming out on top 40-28.

It was already understood before the game that it wasn’t always going to be pretty. Besides the obvious that the two teams were playing in its first game of the year and the kinks needed to be worked out, there’s the fact that there was no spring and teams have thrown together a fall camp leading up to the season. Both teams are also replacing several talented players at key positions.

West Point is the team that just simply amazes me year in and year out. I’m not fully sure the exact elements to this phenomenon, but I do know the key ingredients are the coaching staff developing a culture of excellence and the players buying in.

Year after year this team loses talented players and they always seem to put out the same results. It remains to be seen exactly what happens this year, but I have a pretty good idea that the Green Wave will be contending yet again in Class 5A. Head coach Chris Chambless was as steady as ever after the loss to the Jackets and knew that it was just the beginning for his team as the Green Wave find themselves and their identity this year.

“We learned a lot about ourselves,” Chambless said. “We talked all week long that there would be some things happen in the game that they’ll want to question themselves and I was proud of our guys for moving on and playing the next play. We made too many mistakes. It’s the first game with a lot of new faces out there, but they’re veterans now and I’m going to remind them of that this week.”

While new faces are the next to shine for the Green Wave this year, a familiar one in black and gold was lighting up Yellow Jacket Stadium.

Luke Altmyer, this week’s OCH Regional Medical Center Athlete of the Week, put together quite possibly the best half of football I’ve seen from a high school quarterback. Even Altmyer’s incompletions looked good as he came out sharp and precise through the air and even busted off a 72-yard run to show people just how much his game has progressed. If there’s a better quarterback in the state, I don’t know who it is Now he’s gunning to be one of the best in the nation.

There are plenty of things that both teams can do to clean up as there is for every team, but I think everyone that left the stadium on Friday knew that they were watching two bonafide contenders for the state titles in their re

spective classifications.

Now that it’s over, both teams move forward cheering for the other to end up holding the gold ball. There’s also things that the players are going

to want to clean up this week as they get back to work and it’s still a long road to December and wherever the state championships might be.

“Next, we want to get better at what we do,” Starkville head coach Chris Jones said of his team’s improvements

moving forward. “It’s the little stuff. The more we play, the better we’ll get.”